Gennady Golovkin had a body shot knockout of Matthew Macklin for the ages

Gennady Golovkin beat Matthew Macklin by third-round KO on Saturday night with an absolutely sublime body shot for the ages.

GGG was handling Macklin well in their first few rounds and even opened a cut over the Irishman’s left eye. Then just over a minute into the third, Golovkin delivered a devastating left hook to Macklin’s right side in the third round to end the fight.

It was the best body shot knockout I have seen since Roy Jones Jr. ruined Virgil Hill with a shot to the side in 1998:

That was GGG’s 14th straight knockout. He improves to 27-0 with 24 knockouts. The middleweight could be headed for a match with Sergio Martinez.

If you don’t understand how devastating a body blow can be, just take a look at how Macklin’s face looked after getting hit:

“Without a shadow of a doubt he’s definitely the best kid I’ve ever fought,” Macklin said after the fight. “I had a plan to exploit his weakness, which really was his lack of experience. He had only been 10 rounds once. But, credit to him — he didn’t even let me get into any kind of groove. He was patient, he was hard to hit clean.

“The shot he took me, that’s one of my favorites. I’ve done lots of people like that down the years so I was do one probably.”